


Burden Shared

by sleepyMoritz (Catherss)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, British English, Friendship, Gen, High School, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, LGBTQ Themes, Long-Distance Friendship, Magical Realism, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24165841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherss/pseuds/sleepyMoritz
Summary: Kane typed out a message:Please just let me know if you're okaySent it, then picked up the bandages and began to wrap them gingerly over the oozing slashes on his back.When he'd first looked at them months and months ago, they were thin but deep slices into his shoulder blades, over the bulge of something massive burrowed under his skin. Now, like tectonic plates breaking up the earth's surface, a chasm was beginning to form.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Burden Shared

Kane typed out a message:

_Please just let me know if you're okay_

Sent it, then picked up the bandages and began to wrap them gingerly over the oozing slashes on his back.

When he'd first looked at them months and months ago, they were thin but deep slices into his shoulder blades, over the bulge of something massive burrowed under his skin. Now, like tectonic plates breaking up the earth's surface, a chasm was beginning to form. He'd propped a mirror up against the bathtub, tilted to reflect the bathroom cabinet, so he could see what he was doing, inspect the magma that rolled down his back and left cold ruddy streaks in its path. As Kane unrolled the gauze over his skin, slowly layering and covering and hiding, he felt his disgust fade.

He washed his hands, put the tools of his deception away, and put on a t-shirt. With enough layers, when he was clothed again, he almost looked normal.

* * *

There was still no reply to Kane's message. There hadn't been any replies to his messages since January. It was March now, and as spring began to emerge from the rotting corpse of winter, his worry sprouted bright warning colours.

He found himself yet again in the bathroom, quietly bandaging himself, catching rivulets of blood with toilet paper. Next door his parents slept, dead to the world, unknowing what was happening to their son, and the thought of telling them made his stomach churn. Rather like a cat, he'd prefer to go die under a neighbor's car than ask them for help. The thought of doctors poking around in his wound, examining it, putting metal up against the thing in his back and scraping broke him into a sweat.

Because he would have to go to a hospital. Kane was under _no_ illusion that this was normal.

The thing inside the gashes was more prominent now. It was sometimes pink with fresh-slick blood, sometimes a blood moon brown when it dried. He thought that it was probably actually white, whatever this gristly intrusion was. It didn't hurt much, but it pulsed with dull pain and tugged at his skin and made itself known often, like an insistent child tugging on the skirts of her mother. He couldn't forget that it was there, what was hiding under cotton.

No matter. Bandages around his ribs made the fear ease. T-shirt on. Then a hoodie and a jacket and his backpack.

The stairs creaked as he eased his way down them and the quiet click when he closed the front door behind him felt titanically loud. Night-time had made a shell of his little cul-de-sac, and there wasn't even a cat to keep him company. He felt odd, surreptitiously drifting down the street, half-expecting a neighbor to fling open a window and demand to know where he was going during the witching hour. He felt _observed_. By who, he wasn't sure, which made it all the more unsettling.

In spite of this, Kane made it to the station in good time and found the idle coach with _NEWCASTLE_ glowing above the windshield like a beacon.

 _Sit tight_ , he wrote, hoping the other end of the line wasn't completely black and dead but knowing it probably was. _I'm coming to you._

* * *

The coach had ambled into Newcastle by dawn, and stepping off out of the stuffy air, Kane felt hopeful.

He went to go find the YHA. The man on the desk inspected his passport slowly. He had a thin face and deep eye bags, and Kane found himself immediately distrustful.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Are you a student?"

"An apprentice." A lie, but an innocuous one, to fly under the radar that kids out of school in the middle of the week ping on. Kane had always looked a little young for his age.

Satisfied, the man handed the passport back, and slid a form over for him to fill in.

Paid up, Kane went up to his dorm. The drawn curtains had a sliver of a crack in them, allowing Kane to see a body huddled in under a thin duvet in one of the bunks. When the door shut behind him, the body jerked up, and they made bewildered eye contact through the dim room.

"Sorry," Kane whispered.

The body slid back down. Kane dropped off his stuff, and went to the shared bathroom to change his bandages.

They'd started to bleed through. He used to feel woozy, the first time this happened, but now he just felt sick and exhausted by his body. Suddenly paranoid, he checked that he had in fact locked the door behind him. The thought of the body in the bed discovering him bare made his chest roil inwards to a knot.

When he hunched over the sink, let his arms fold a little bit from a straight line to an acute angle, he could just about see the terrible thing in his back. It was getting bigger. It would be harder to move unnoticeable soon.

* * *

The secondary school Kane found himself outside of was a huddled mess of brutalism and buildings recently completed, making the actual age of the grounds he was sneaking into timeless and unplaceable.

He hopped over the back wall, and wandered around a little bit. The school day was over, but there was a rugby team practicing on the farthest field, which wasn't what he was looking for. He felt like someone must - surely - realise that he wasn't a student here; he felt out of place and obvious. But no one stopped him as he wandered further into the beast.

Luckily, he had a clue to direct his way:

**_nah the allotments are next to the science building so sometimes in bio we go out there for experiments and shit_ **

**_i mean i don't want the other students seeing the work we do in case they want to destroy it_ **

_Do you think they'd do that?_

**_kids will destroy anything lmfao_ **

Kane found the science building from a campus map he found online, wandering around a little more and wishing his orientation skills were better. There were some students knelt in amongst some undergrowth, pulling up chunks of earth with the weeds they were picking out.

"Hello," Kane called out.

The students looked up at him. Kane felt himself flush.

"Hi," one said, a girl wearing glasses, her hair pulled back into tight plaits that ran in front of her shoulders. She pushed one out of the way and blew the stray baby hairs from her red face.

"I'm looking for Lee?" Kane said. "I'm-- I'm a mate of his."

The kids all looked between each other, and Kane felt horribly self-conscious, because they all clearly knew something he didn't.

"Lee doesn't go to this school anymore," the girl said.

Kane took a couple of steps closer to them.

"Careful of the seedlings," a boy said.

Dutifully avoided, Kane asked, "Where is he then?"

"Eeh. He said his mum was gonna enrol him in the Catholic school."

"The Catholic school?"

"St. Benedict's," she clarified. "I don't know. That's just what I heard."

"Has he replied to your messages? He's not replying to mine."

She thought for a second. "I didn't really message him much."

"He got his phone taken off him," one boy chimed in.

"Yeah, he said that his mum was dead pissed off," said another.

"What'd he do?" Kane asked, bewildered. 

"Dunno," said the girl.

Kane bit the inside of his cheek and let the slippery flesh slowly slide out from his canines. "Okay. Thank you."

* * *

Kane paid for another night at the hostel.

The body in the bed was gone when he trudged back, heavy and defeated. He'd gone and bought a greasy takeaway from a kebab shop, but the usual pleasure he'd feel in a treat tea was muted and dry in his mouth. He ate it all anyway, because he'd been ravenous lately.

With nothing better to do and feeling like if he went out onto the streets again he'd just get caught, he ended up getting ready for bed earlier than he had in years and drifting in and out of sleep.

At some point, he jerked awake, and the body was staring at him. In the disorentating moment that followed, Kane was sure that he had not just been observed, but seen; fundamentally out of place, with a disgusting form that split apart more and more every day, one that would surely eventually break, not as a matter of when, but a matter of how badly. He forgot he was clothed and it was dark and pulled the covers tighter over his shoulders, the press he created for himself comforting. Layers, layers, layers.

The body turned the bathroom light on, and a scruffy teenager was illuminated in the doorway.

"Sorry, mate," he whispered, before shuffling through and closing the door behind him.

* * *

Kane woke during that part of morning that must be the time they talked about when they said the thing about the darkest bit before dawn.

He got up reluctantly, showered, saw the water run a baby pink, dressed his shoulders, saw the white of the bandages bloom red. He couldn't muster up rage or sickness right now. He just felt heavy.

Breakfast was on in the canteen, and by the time he headed back upstairs to grab his backpack, the streets were an ashy grey. The walk to the Catholic school saw town wake up a little bit, the sky break a sweat and give way to blue. He arrived comfortably before the first bell, and sat on a wall by what seemed to be the main gate, pulled his jacket over his lack of uniform and just waited.

Kids came slowly. Those in proper uniforms and neat hair first. That was the sort of person Kane usually was. He liked to follow rules, where he could. Then the yard began to fill with kids, especially when the busses arrived, and Kane scanned every face, hoping that he'd get lucky. And then:

Lee, in his untidy, unironed uniform, weaving through the crowd.

Kane wanted to shout his name, but despised the idea of calling attention to himself like that, so instead he just barged through the students and apologised as he went.

Lee was in arm's reach, and Kane grabbed his sleeve. He turned, his expression immediately jumping from surprise to confusion.

"K-- what the fuck are you doing here?"

It was so Lee that Kane couldn't help the laugh. "Looking for you, dickhead! You-- you stopped responding, and I just knew it wasn't like you, and--"

_I was worried._

Lee side-eyed the crowd and nodded: _follow me._

Kane obliged, following Lee's path as they left the grounds.

"Sorry, there's a-- an alleyway--" he began.

"It's okay," Kane said.

Lee took a sharp turn, and they ended up on an alleyway next to a carpark. Lee sat down on the concrete parapet designed to stop cars from rolling through the fence. Kane hovered for a moment, and then joined him.

"What happened?" Kane asked.

Lee took off his school tie. "Mum-- well, she took my phone off me.”

“Why?”

“Dunno why. It's all fucking stupid anyway." He stuffed the strip of material into his backpack, and from a hidden pocket slipped out a mini pocket knife that he flipped idly in his hands. "She's gone mental these past few months. Like, actually mental. I hate it. I don't know what to do about it." Lee turned to Kane. "What about your mum? She know you're here?"

"No. Said I was staying over at Owen's."

"On a school night?"

"Mate, she doesn't care what I do. Neither of them do."

Lee nodded, and they sat for a while in companionable silence, heads tilted to the blue sky.

* * *

Kane hadn't had a chance to change the bandages all day; they'd kicked about town, gotten Lee a brick phone with a pay as you go SIM so they could still talk, sat around in a McDonalds for a few hours just talking. But the day began to close, it was kind of unspoken that Lee would trail Kane back to his hostel room, a sanctuary for just a little while longer before both of them had to go back to the real world.

But of course Lee had noticed the dark patch of blood blooming across the back of Kane's hoodie, and demanded to know what was wrong; like a pickaxe had been taken through the settling sediment of Kane's worried loneliness, he had given in.

"Shit," Lee breathed, examining the gashes as Kane sat on the bed. Kane felt under the microscope. The need to cover up warred with his need for someone, fucking _anyone_ , to see him - really see him, see him with all the ugly bits, and say that it was fine. They were on a precipice and Lee didn’t know it. "Does it hurt?"

"Not really."

"How about now?"

Kane felt a light pressure close to the gash. "Not really."

"I'm pressing pretty hard."

Kane shrugged.

"It doesn't hurt at all?"

Kane shook his head. "Only a little, sometimes."

"I'm surprised it hasn't gotten infected," Lee said. There was a long silence, and Kane held his breath. "It's kinda cool though."

"What?"

"Like, that it hasn't gotten infected and doesn't hurt much. It's pretty cool. It looks like there's something trapped under your skin or some shit."

"That's what I thought. I mean-- I didn't think it was cool."

Lee hummed, and another long pause stretched out.

"What... what do you think I should do?" Kane asked quietly.

* * *

Kane barely winced when the penknife blade first pressed into his skin.

He was curled up into himself on the floor of the shower, knees up to his chest, and saw a pool around him. He thought that maybe he should feel sick at the sight of it, but this time it felt good; more like a purge than an unwanted letting.

"Oh, shit," Lee breathed softly.

"What? What is it?"

Kane felt a strange prickling sensation, and then Lee presented something bloody and pink in his palm. A feather.

"That was in me?" Kane said, horrified.

"There's more. I'm sorry, I need to--"

Kane groaned as a sudden ache flowed through his bones, an utterly alien and unusual feeling. It stopped for a moment, and pins and needles started to prickle in his back.

"Oh... Kane, you'll need to look at this."

Kane wobbled dizzily to his feet and turned his heel in the pool that had gathered under him. Lee put a towel down on the floor between the shower and the sink, on which Kane left a red footprint on his way to the mirror. Bracing his hands on the sink, he slowly raised his eyes to look.

Something boney and gristley was emerging from his back, streaked and bloody.

"I'm going to pull them out."

"There's more?"

"I think so, yeah. This is just the top part. I think they're--"

"Yeah."

They shared a glance in the mirror, a simultaneous look of being _completely_ out of their depth. Then Lee's expression hardened into determination.

Lee placed a firm palm on the back of Kane's neck, his fingers leaving a print as he adjusted his grip, and Kane had nowhere to look but at himself, a horrible confrontation of the situation. His eyes looked darker than usual, and then he snapped them shut as he felt Lee _tug_.

A wet, meaty sound as it felt like a place inside of him that he hadn't known was itchy and irritating had been scratched. A new torrent of wet heat down his back. Strange parts of him stretched and flexed and tensed. He had to roll his shoulders; his body demanded it, and each new move of his muscles was a euphoric expansion of what his body had been before. Gravity pulled him backwards slightly, and his feet flexed on the tiled ground to compensate.

Balanced, he opened his eyes. Wings emerged from him, feathers prickling and breathing despite their bloody birthing, the white bone-line structures in between fanning out and expanding.

Kane caught Lee's glance in the mirror again, and he expected disgust. But Lee was just staring, mouth open and amazed, kinda looking like he'd just murdered someone. The initial good feelings washed away to worry and horror.

"How am I supposed to hide this?" Kane said, trembling.

"Hide it?" Lee asked, meeting his gaze in the mirror. "This is so fucking cool. You're-- I don't know, transforming, and you're asking how to hide it? You don't!"

"But I want to," he admitted quietly.

Lee's excitement simmered down. He put an arm gingerly around Kane's shoulder. "Yeah, well, some people have greatness thrust upon 'em." Kane shot him a look. "It's on a poster in my English classroom."

Kane examined himself, experimenting with how to move his new appendage. He was both alien and familiar to himself, but ultimately terrified and drenched in horror as to how to proceed.

But then Lee nudged him. “Let me get to the sink. I need to wash my hands. Then let’s clean up a bit.”

Kane nodded mutely and stepped away and watched Lee for a moment, glad that - in amongst all this - he still had Lee to help him out.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Pogopop for beta reading :)


End file.
